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After a very long wait, Dune hit theaters in the fall of 2021 to both rave reviews and big box office. This despite bowing on HBO Max at the same time as its theatrical debut. But Dune was really just Dune: Part One. The first film only covered the first half of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 novel. Luckily, the rest of the story is on the way. Dune: Part Two was officially announced on October 26, 2021. Here’s everything we know so far about Dune: Part Two, the follow-up to the Academy Award-winning sci-fi film.

Title

The official name of the movie is Dune: Part Two.

Dune: Part Two‘s Plot

The official plot synopsis from Warner Bros. and Legendary for Dune: Part Two reads as follows:

This follow-up film will explore the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.

If you’re a big fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune, this all sounds like a pretty faithful adaptation of the second half of his novel. And unlike David Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, this packed second half will now have time to breathe. And who knows? Maybe we’ll see elements of the later Dune novels pop up a wee bit early.

Dune: Part Two Cast

Almost the entire original cast from Dune is back for Dune: Part Two. At least if their character survived, that is. This includes Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides, the “Kwisatz Haderach,” and Zendaya as his Fremen paramour Chani. Javier Bardem also returns as Chani’s father, Fremen leader Stilgar. Paul’s very pregnant mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) also returns for Dune: Part Two. Josh Brolin is back as Paul’s mentor Gurney Halleck, as is Stephen McKinley Henderson as Thufir Hawat, the loyal Mentat to House Atreides.

Stellan Skarsgård reprises his role as the sadistic Baron Harkonnen, as does Dave Bautista as the Baron’s loyal lackey and nephew Glossu Rabban. Charlotte Rampling’s character, the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, is also slated to return. New cast members include Florence Pugh (Princess Irulan) Austin Butler (Feyd Rautha), and Christopher Walken (Emperor Shadddam IV). They are joined by Léa Seydoux (Lady Margot) and Souheila Yacoub as the Fremen warrior Shishakli.

Of course, certain major characters died in the first film, and are not scheduled to appear in Dune: Part Two. These include Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, and Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides. But there could be surprise flashbacks. So don’t count them all out just yet. We may yet see them on the sands of Arrakis.

Behind the Scenes

Just as he was for Dune, director Denis Villeneuve is back behind the camera for Dune: Part Two. This will officially make it his first sequel ever. At least to a film of his own. Jon Spaihts is still writing the script for the second chapter of the story. Filming begins in the fall of 2022. Hans Zimmer will also return to score the sequel.

Dune: Part Two Release Date

Dune: Part Two hits theaters on November 3, 2023.

Originally published August 1, 2022.

Editor’s Note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Digital Networks.

The post Everything We Know About DUNE: PART TWO appeared first on Nerdist.

One of the great acting legends of stage, film, and television has left us. Angela Lansbury has passed away, just five days shy of her 97th birthday. According to her family, Lansbury died peacefully in her sleep on October 11. She is survived by her three children, Anthony, Deirdre, and David, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury. Although many know her mainly from her years as Jessica Fletcher on the hit TV series Murder, She Wrote, her career was varied and long, covering nearly eight decades.

Angela Lansbury was born in the U.K. in 1925, but her family moved to the United States in 1940 to escape the Blitz. Her mother was an actress, and she decided to follow in her footsteps. Despite being married twice, she always kept her birth surname due to her acting career. By age 20 she was starring in Hollywood movies like The Picture of Dorian Gray, which earned her an Oscar nomination. She had a contract with MGM, the biggest studio in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Although not a major star during this period, she worked steadily for years, earning another Oscar nomination for The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.

Superstardom finally came for Lansbury when she played the lead role of Mame on Broadway. This began a long and fruitful career on stage. Notable stage roles for her during the ’60s and ’70s included The King and I, Gypsy, and originating the role of Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. She won a total of six Tony awards for her stage work, and also hosted the Tony Awards five times. In 1971, she starred in Bedknobs and Broomsticks for Disney, leading to a long association with the company. This included lending her voice to many fireworks shows and special presentations at the various theme parks.

Of course, to most American audiences, Lansbury will always be most famous for her role as the mystery novelist and detective Jessica Fletcher in the long-running series Murder, She Wrote. From 1984 to 1996, the show was on one of television’s biggest hits. And it earned her a whopping 18 Emmy nominations. Right in the middle of the Jessica Fletcher years, Lansbury voiced Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast, another major Disney film that would introduce her to a whole new audience — children. That Disney relationship would continue with roles in Fantasia 2000, Nanny McPhee, and Mary Poppins Returns in 2018.

Lansbury returned to the stage in the 21st century, although nearly eighty years of age at that point. She starred in Driving Miss Daisy on stage with James Earl Jones in 2013. Her last major stage appearance was three years ago, when she acted in The Importance of Being Earnest in 2019. Thanks to the role of Mame, Lansbury became a gay icon, and she cherished her LGBTQ fans, and spent decades contributing to many AIDS charities. Angela Lansbury was the definition of a “life well lived,” and her iconic roles have ensured she will always be remembered.

The post Angela Lansbury, Icon of Stage, Film, and TV, Has Died, Age 96 appeared first on Nerdist.

BGN interviews the cast of the Disney+ series Big Shot.

Featured in the interviews are: YVETTE NICOLE BROWN (Sherilyn Thomas), SOPHIA MITRI SCHLOSS (Emma) , NELL VERLAQUE (Louise), SARA EACHEAGARAY (Ava), JOHN STAMOS (Marvyn Korn), TISHA CUSTODIO (Mouse) , TIANA LE (Destiny) , and CRICKET WAMPLER (Giggles).

In season two of Big Shot, Marvyn Korn (Stamos) returns to Westbrook with a new fire, ready to show that his basketball team belongs in D-2 and that he’s still the championship-winning, powerhouse coach he was in the NCAA. Marvyn’s latest plan toward relevance is to get his team broadcast on ESPN and his method is to recruit an unlikely player: Ava (Echeagaray), a gutsy beach volleyball phenom whose public tantrum got her ousted from her own sport. Between losing their assistant coach Holly Barrett (Gilsig) to a rival school, new friction amongst teammates, a sudden and unexpected proximity to boys, and off-the-court disasters that no one could’ve predicted, this season, the Westbrook Sirens have even more to prove.

Interviewer: Jeandra LeBeauf

Video Editor: Jamie Broadnax

Season 2 premieres Oct 12th on Disney+

The Trust and Safety team at Twitch state that they spend their time making sure users are protected and guidelines are followed on the platform in accordance with their terms and conditions. During TwitchCon 2022 at the San Diego Convention Center, the team discussing policy included: 

• Angela Hession, VP Trust & Safety
• Alison Huffman, VP of Product, Community Health
• Connie Chung, Head of Global Policy, Trust, and Safety
• Doug Scott, Chief Customer Officer

Each gave some insight about what tools and and rules they are implementing to make Twitch a fair and equitable space for users. 

According to Hession, “I think because of the ever-evolving nature of life that response time is essential. I think it’s not as acute for static upload video. So our response time is 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and it’s ensuring this admission and how it escalates and prioritizes harm.” With 8 million different communities that are going live every month, at any given moment it’s certain that Twitch has a large scale of users to monitor. There are also two and a half million viewers watching streams live as well.

For the team, prioritizing accuracy and nuance is what comes first in their job to protect users on the platform. Being quick and efficient is their approach to solving these problems. There are adversarial actors, as Hession mentions, and then people whose core beliefs may be bigoted are harmful anyway. Hession groups these users together when filtering out abuse buckets.

Twitch heavily relies on its volunteer-based model of users branded as mods to also assist in this capacity. While many moderators may not have the knowledge base to understand safety and security, Twitch says they are trying programs like Safety Center. They are also growing their moderator program. 

According to Huffman, the use of real people is important to the platform: “We can’t do this just through tech because it’s live and we don’t know what’s happening.” Huffman started as a community moderator in 2007. For her, a lot of this has been a training experience on the powers of building an operation.

What makes this particular social network unique compared to others is that static content gets preemptively reviewed and scanned before it is live to the world. According to the policy team, the magic of Twitch happens when the streamer and chat are interacting and any delay breaks. Huffman further went on to say that Twitch relies on partnership with the community to have them help keep the platform and users’ homes safe. “It means we are having streamers and channel moderators who help keep their community safe to their standards.”

Twitch also has made it possible for moderators to report people who are violating community guidelines and for the process to be intuitive and clear so that users are able to file secure reports to the operations team and the offending material is reviewed and taken down as quickly as possible. 

“We really needed to find that right connection between the technology that helps scale and then the people who have the right nuance of judgment,” says Huffman.

The company also is thinking about education. “It’s not just about our rules, but it’s why we’re doing this,” says Hession. Twitch has kicked off some programs, giving more information about the underlying logic of community guidelines. The livestream platform is doing that through music, to articulate why they have their policies and how they’re preventing harm. The policy team wants to empower their streamers to help build the communities that are right for them. They realized that they can’t do it all and can’t do it all instantly. Hession says, “The best way to protect our creators is to give them powerful, easy-to-use nuanced tools that let them build the community. We want to be able to have communities that you can set up to tailor that own individual experience which I think is really important.”

Panelist Scott says, “God bless the mods. We love our mods.” When it comes to suspension on Twitch, panelist Chung says, “Suspension rates are the severity; you want to make sure it’s definitely proportional if it’s very low.”

Twitch believes that their user community has been very clear about what they expect based on experience and they want to control that experience. The team is adamant that as the service grows and evolves, the safety experience needs to do so as well. “I think we’re very lucky that we have a very engaged community. They care about safety as much as we do,” says Hession. 

As far as operations go, Twitch is proud to share that they have resolved 80% of user reports within 10 minutes, which according to them is industry leading. Chung says she’s amazed at how much the community wants to follow Twitch’s goals. “I think that we’re going to continue to be really excited for that for next year. We’ve got a number of policy options that are going to come deepening our understanding of harassment, sexual harassment, and that is changing in the industry. Twitch is making sure that we stay abreast of the trends so that we can protect our community but also have good listening skills,” she says.

You can learn more about safety practices happening at Twitch here.